The Clinic filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York in December 2023 against Delaware County on behalf of Catskills-based newspaper The Reporter. The suit claims that county officials violated the paper’s constitutional rights in de-designating it as an official paper and in issuing what has amounted to an illegal gag order for county employees. Read The Times Union coverage of the suit here and Cornell Law School’s coverage of the suit here.
NEWFANE, NY – On June 21, 2023, Cornell Law School’s First Amendment Clinic filed a lawsuit in Niagara County Supreme Court on behalf of Tracy Murphy, animal rights activist and founder of Asha’s Farm Sanctuary in Newfane New York. The suit, an Article 78 petition, challenges a gag order Newfane Town Court Justice Bruce Barnes imposed on Murphy restricting her First Amendment rights while she awaits trial on a misdemeanor larceny charge stemming from a dispute over the ownership of two cows.
The gag order imposes a blanket ban on Murphy’s use of any form of social media – which the order defines to “specifically include Facebook and public billboards, etc.” – while the criminal case against her is pending. Murphy’s suit challenges the gag order on several grounds, including that the gag order is an unconstitutional prior restraint of speech in violation of the First Amendment, that the order is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad, and that the order violates New York bail laws.
“The ability to interact with others on social media – whether that be through ‘liking’ posts, commenting, or perusing timelines – is critical to the exercise of First Amendment rights in the modern day,” said First Amendment Clinic Summer Fellow Eman Naga. “By blocking Murphy’s ability to use social media and express her views publicly, the gag order effectively strips Murphy of her voice. It also sets a dangerous precedent for other criminal defendants to be unlawfully silenced, too – regardless of whether they share Ms. Murphy’s views about animal rights.”
“Asha’s Farm Sanctuary is founded on spreading hope and love,” stated Murphy. “The gag order is inhibiting my ability to do just that, as well as my ability to fundraise for the Sanctuary and advocate for myself and the animals I care so deeply about helping.”
“The Supreme Court has made very clear that blanket gag orders like the one Ms. Murphy challenges are unacceptable under the First Amendment,” said Christina Neitzey, Stanton Fellow at the First Amendment Clinic and counsel for Murphy. “Courts cannot pick and choose who gets to enjoy free speech rights based on factors like politics and personal lifestyle differences. For the First Amendment to mean anything, we must all have these rights—vegans and ranchers alike.”
Murphy is represented in this suit by Neitzey, assisted by Clinic Summer Fellows Naga and Karem Lizbeth Herrera. The matter is pending in Niagara County Supreme Court as Murphy v. Barnes, Index No. E180218/2023.
Murphy is represented in the parallel criminal matter by Chris Carraway with the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Wayne Hsiung of Direct Action Everywhere, and Bonnie Klapper, former federal prosecutor and current member of the Direct Action Everywhere Legal Team. Murphy’s criminal defense team previously challenged the same gag order before Justice Barnes, as well as an earlier version of the gag order Town of Somerset Justice Pamela Rider imposed at Murphy’s arraignment.
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Contact: Christina Neitzey, cn266@cornell.edu, 607-255-4196
Last month, Cornell Law School’s First Amendment Clinic and co-counsel Greenberg Traurig LLP finalized a settlement agreement which allows citizen journalist James Meaney of Geneva, New York, to stand by his investigative reporting on local construction company Massa Construction, Inc. This agreement resolves a lawsuit Massa brought against Meaney and his watchdog blog The Geneva Believer nearly three years ago.
The suit centered around a series of articles in which Meaney examined — and at times criticized — the City of Geneva’s public works bidding and record keeping procedures generally, and the relationship between Massa and the City specifically.
Massa appealed two 2021 Ontario County Supreme Court decisions which dismissed Massa’s suit and awarded attorneys’ fees to Meaney’s legal team to the New York State Appellate Division, Fourth Department. The matter settled after briefing was complete on the appeals, but prior to oral argument before the Fourth Department.
Neither Meaney nor The Geneva Believer made any payment to Massa as part of the settlement. Meaney and his legal team maintain that —as Supreme Court, Ontario County, found — Meaney’s coverage of Massa contained no false statements of fact, alleged or implied. Remaining details of the agreement are confidential.
“Citizen journalists like Jim Meaney are exactly who anti-SLAPP laws are intended to protect,” said Christina Neitzey, Stanton Fellow in the Cornell First Amendment Clinic. “We are relieved that, through this settlement agreement, Jim can stand by his reporting and put this matter behind him.”
“I am deeply thankful that this case has reached a resolution,” said Meaney. “If it weren’t for the countless hours of tireless, pro bono work by the Clinic’s exceptional team of students and attorneys, and by Greenberg Traurig, my case would have had a very different outcome. Citizen journalists like me who lack the resources to mount a free speech legal defense against deep-pocketed entities are extremely fortunate to have the Cornell First Amendment Clinic ready to help.”
Meaney was represented by Michael Grygiel of Greenberg Traurig LLP, along with the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic’s Stanton Fellow Christina Neitzey, Clinic Director Mark H. Jackson, former Clinic Associate Director Jared Carter, former Clinic Associate Director Cortelyou Kenney, and former teaching fellow Tyler Valeska. Former First Amendment Clinic students Corby Burger, Michael Mapp, Rob Ward, Kasper Dworzanczyk, and James Pezzullo also contributed.
NEW YORK, N.Y. – Streetsblog NYC, represented by the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic, filed a groundbreaking lawsuit last week against the New York City Department of Transportation, alleging that DOT systematically violates the state’s Freedom of Information Law by forcing nearly everyone who seeks public records to wait six months before receiving any responsive documents.
The lawsuit asks the New York Supreme Court to issue an injunction directing DOT to end its practice of imposing uniform, half-year-long delays that prevent the public from finding out, in a timely way, what its government is up to.
The suit seeks to enforce the basic purpose behind FOIL — to promote an open and democratic government by giving everyone the right to request documents from state agencies. As long as requested documents do not fall into one of the law’s narrow exemptions, the agency is required to provide them — and it must do so in a timeframe that is reasonable under the circumstances of the individual request, typically within 20 days.
The lawsuit alleges that Streetsblog has filed dozens of FOIL requests with the department since 2021, and each one of them has faced a nearly identical, six-month delay. According to the complaint, Streetsblog requested a copy of the DOT Commissioner’s official calendar from a single day. DOT said it would take 187 days to respond. The complaint further alleges that Streetsblog requested DOT’s phone or email directory, and the agency again said it would take 187 days — and then it ended up missing its own deadline. In another instance, according to the complaint, Streetsblog asked for a copy of a single contract, which it identified by contract number. DOT said its response would take 182 days.
“By imposing a six-month blanket delay in response to every one of our client’s requests, DOT is obviously making no effort to determine what a reasonable response time would be for each request,” said Michael Linhorst, the Clinic’s Local Journalism Attorney. “They are regularly flouting the clear requirements of the law.”
Relying on public data, the complaint alleges that Streetsblog is not alone. According to the complaint, out of all the requests that DOT received between June 2021 and August 2024, the department gave itself an average of 182 days to respond. Almost every single request — more than 98 percent of them — was delayed by longer than 170 days.
“This case is important not just to Streetsblog but to scores of reporters around the city whose ability to inform the public depends on receiving timely information from government officials,” said Gersh Kuntzman, editor of Streetsblog. “By routinely delaying virtually every Freedom of Information Law request, the Adams administration effectively delays coverage of its actions so long that it becomes less newsworthy compared to whatever story of the day reporters are chasing.”
By filing this lawsuit, the Clinic is seeking to establish new legal precedent. While such “policy or practice” cases are widely accepted in federal litigation regarding the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), New York courts have not yet recognized the claim under FOIL.
“Policy or practice claims give federal FOIA teeth,” said Evan Deakin ’25, a Clinic student who worked on the complaint. “If these claims are recognized under New York FOIL, agencies will no longer be able to use delay to circumvent the law’s requirement that government records be available to the public.”
The lawsuit, Kuntzman et al. v. New York City Department of Transportation, is now pending in the New York County Supreme Court.
In addition to Linhorst and Deakin, Clinic students Andrew Brockmeyer, Sophia Gilbert and Cameron Misner and alumna Fernanda Pires Merouco worked on the lawsuit and the legal arguments behind it, with supervision from Heather Murray, Managing Attorney of the Clinic’s Local Journalism Project.
Contact:
Michael Linhorst, Local Journalism Attorney at the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic, at MML89@cornell.edu
In April 2024, Cameron Misner ’24 (pictured center) argued before a five-judge panel at the Appellate Division, Fourth Department, in an important free speech case. Cameron argued that his clients – all of whom are involved in Central New York’s metal core music scene – should be awarded attorneys’ fees for their defense against a meritless defamation suit that aimed to punish them for warning others in their music community about a colleague’s alleged sexual misconduct. Evan Deakin ’25 (left), Danielle Mimeles ’24 (not pictured), and JD exchange student Yael Iosilevich (not pictured) also worked on the case.
In April 2024, Cornell First Amendment Clinic student Sabrina Palacios, J.D. ’24, appeared at an initial status conference in the Northern District of New York, earning her the distinction of being the first student to appear before Magistrate Judge Miroslav Lovric in nearly five years on the bench. Magistrate Judge Lovric welcomed future participation from Cornell students. The Clinic represents a Catskills newspaper in this case, which alleges that Delaware County officials violated the paper’s First Amendment rights when they revoked the paper’s designation as an official county paper in retaliation for the paper’s coverage and when the County Attorney issued a “gag directive” prohibiting employees from freely communicating with the paper’s staff. Ms. Palacios is pictured with case teammate Matthew Hornung, J.D., ’24, and Heather Murray, Managing Attorney of the Clinic’s Local Journalism Project. Not pictured: Teammates Evan Deakin, J.D., ’25, Iain Smith, J.D., ’25, Yifei Yang, J.D. ’23, Director Mark Jackson, and Adjunct Professor Michael Grygiel.
Clinic Director Mark Jackson and Local Journalism Project Managing Attorney Heather Murray recently published an Op-Ed in the Albany Times Union to amplify the efforts of journalist Janon Fisher to shed light on the judicial appointment process in NYC. While the trial court in the Clinic’s public records suit ruled that candidate applications for appointed judgeships must be released to the public with minimal redactions to shield private information, an appellate court late last year made it harder to hold power to account by overturning the lower court. Mr. Fisher has sought leave to appeal to the New York Court of Appeals with the Clinic’s assistance. The Court takes up only a small percentage of the requests to hear cases like ours, but we’re hopeful that ours will be one of them.
Thanks to the fantastic Clinic team that has contributed to work on this case thus far starting way back in 2021, including Ava Lubell, Christina Neitzey, Connor Flannery (who argued before both the trial court and the Appellate Division), Nyssa Kruse, Svetlana (Aika) Riguera, and Sun Shen.
Cornell First Amendment Clinic alum Connor Flannery ’23 argued in the Court of Common Pleas, Dauphin County, on February 26, 2023, seeking access to sealed settlement agreements on behalf of local journalism client The Patriot News/PennLive. The Clinic’s client seeks access to the settlement agreements in a wrongful death suit to shed further light on an issue of great public concern involving a young mother killed by an oncoming train as she was exiting a boat ramp in Halifax, Pennsylvania. Also pictured are Mr. Flannery’s supervising attorneys Heather Murray, Managing Attorney of the Cornell Local Journalism Project, Paula Knudsen Burke, Local Legal Initiative Attorney for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Diane Siegel Danoff, a partner at Dechert LLP.
The Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic kicked off the Spring 2024 semester with another informative and inspiring Bootcamp. This Bootcamp treated five new Clinic students and ten returning students to three days of learning and discussion. Speakers included speaker Daniel Novack, Vice President, Associate General Counsel at Penguin Random House, on ongoing legal challenges to book-banning legislation; a panel of some of our stellar local journalism clients and co-counsel, including Teresa Bonner at Penn Live, Jo Ciavaglia at Bucks County Courier Times, Janon Fisher at Newsday, Paula Knudsen Burke at Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and clinic alum Connor Flannery; Prof. James Grimmelmann on the ever-changing landscape of Internet-related First Amendment issues; and a panel of returning students Cam Misner, Sabrina Palacios and Matt Hornung on ways to get the most out of one’s clinic experience.
We are grateful to all our speakers for making this Bootcamp special, and we look forward to the semester ahead.
After filing suit months ago against the NYC DOT on behalf of news outlet Streetsblog to seek access to basic information that is key to assessing the City’s pilot program aimed at curbing dangerous driving, the DOT produced documents to our client on Thanksgiving eve. Thanks to Clinic alumna Yifei Yang for her excellent work on this matter in preparing the Petition and accompanying brief.
What a great start-of-the-semester Bootcamp on Saturday, August 19, 2023, for our incoming students in the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic!
Our students were treated to talks by the likes of Anne Galloway, Tim Cornell, Clinic Local Journalism Project Managing Attorney Heather Murray and recent alumnus Andrew Gelfand on the state of local news and their joint litigation work for pioneering non-profit news site VTDigger; returning Clinic students Patrick George, Cameron Misner, and Dominic Muscarella discussing with moderator, Clinic Fellow Christina Neitzey, how to excel in the Clinic environment; the incomparable Robbie Kaplan of Kaplan Hecker & Fink speaking to our students from the frontlines of the First Amendment; Professor Michael Dorf and Clinic Associate Director/Associate Clinical Professor Gautam Hans discussing the implications of the Supreme Court ruling in 303 Creative, and Co-chair of Greenberg Traurig’s National Media and Entertainment Litigation Group Michael Grygiel on the litigation twists and turns leading to very recent Federal Court decision dismissing the Nicholas Sandmann libel suit against Gannett and several other media organizations.
We are so grateful to all our clients, co-counsels, friends, Clinic alumni and returning students for taking the time and helping to make the day such a smashing success!
New York news outlet Documented launched its Wage Theft Monitor, the largest public repository of data on New York businesses found guilty of wage theft, in August 2023. The Clinic worked hand-in-hand with Documented over the past four years to secure data from the New York Department of Labor via a lawsuit and subsequent negotiations surrounding multiple public records requests.